The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER XXVI NICKY DOES SOME SCOUTING

  “While we rest,” Brownie said to Nicky, “take a good look around.There’s not so many white boys who get to see the Everglades. It’s asight worth seeing, just at daybreak!”

  It was. Nicky stared about, and turned in surprise.

  “Why, I thought,” he said, amazed. “I thought the ’Glades were allswamps. They’re not, at all!”

  “Many a one has the wrong idea,” retorted Brownie affably. “In truth,the ’Glades are just flat bedrock, mostly, under a couple of feet ofwater, and with a very thin soil that the grass hangs onto. DownSouth’ard, you see, where the trees are, that’s Big Cypress. That’s allswamp, I admit, and bad to get into. This would be as bad if you gotlost in it, and that wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”

  Mr. Neale agreed with him, while Nicky, standing upright on the forwardthwart, forgot his wet feet in the beauty and strangeness of the scenebefore him.

  At the Eastern edge of the ’Glades, the sun was rising, casting itsslanting, golden rays across a great expanse of grass, and more grass,and yet more grass.

  That grass was no such growth as is usually understood by the name. Itwas tall, some clumps of it reaching up as high as ten feet. There wereseveral kinds, but most predominant was the terrible saw-grass. Itsstiff uprightness, and its rasping, cutting edges would make of it,Nicky decided, a formidable barrier for anyone who tried to go throughit.

  Brownie agreed with his voiced idea.

  “I went with another lieutenant across the ’Glades, back a couple ofwinters ago,” he said. “It took us months. It’s not so many miles, but,as you can easily see, the grass grows in big clumps, and it is so highthat you can’t spy ahead and find the channels. There are channels, butthey are a good deal like the ones you tell about in those Ten ThousandIslands. Some of them run into blind ends and shoal up; others areblocked by the saw grass—and if anybody wants the job of trying to hacka way through some of these clumps of saw grass, they aren’t namedBrownie.”

  Nicky, and Mr. Neale, could readily see how difficult it would be to cuta way through: the edges of the blades could inflict such deep gashes inthe hands that only by the most careful work could one cut at them, andthen only in heavy gloves which would, in a short time, be cut through.Even boots, Brownie said, were not thick enough to withstand much workin passing through the grass.

  “In places,” he added, “we had to wade and push our canoes—we had twospecially built canoes, and we made a survey while we crossed. The grasstears at leather and rubber boots and in almost no time it gets through.Look across! See, about half way, there is a long clump of grass—almostlike land! Well, it’s just grass, and it is so long and so thick that ittook us a couple of weeks, going South, to get down around it. Incovering five miles straight across we made more than forty miles oftravel. You see, we’d go fifty feet and run into a dead end, or into abend that took us to grass; then we’d have to go back and search outanother way. Back and forth, around and back, through and back, we went.I tell you, it was no lark!”

  They were rested, and with water enough to float their dory, they turnedher prow toward the distant line of trees which marked the Big CypressSwamp and sculled carefully, winding along the comparatively open way atthe edge of the rim of the ’Glades.

  The Everglades are really a sort of inland sea, very shallow and thicklystudded with clumps of the terrible, high grass. Around the table landof the shallow sea, which rises gradually toward its center line,something like a low crest of a long underwater hill, there is a rim ofsomewhat higher rock which keeps the water in.

  The water seems to be replenished by streams or springs coming upthrough fissures in the rock; its drainage is to the open sea and thebays inside the outer reefs, through rivers like the Shark and theHarney on the West side, and the Miami on the Eastern slope.

  Sculling carefully, and keeping a sharp lookout, the trio in thelight-draught dory progressed steadily as the sun rose higher. It wasstill very early.

  “I doubt if the hi-jackers are awake yet,” said Brownie. “They probablyfeel that they are well hid.”

  “What’s that—ahead?” queried Nicky, standing, carefully balanced, in thestern. He sat down and helped Mr. Neale to steady their craft whileBrownie rose at the bow and spied over the grass at one side.

  “I swan!” exclaimed Brownie under his breath, turning to his companions.“It’s—a boat.”

  He turned and stared, under his cupped hand.

  “I can make out—why! It’s the _Senorita_, printed on the bow.”

  “The _Senorita_!” exclaimed Nicky softly. “That’s the tender we hadtaken away by Mr. Coleson and Don Ortiga’s brother—the one they calledSenor Ortiga.”

  “Then they must have rowed in at the Harney yesterday, and come aroundbehind the Shark,” stated Mr. Neale. “I wonder what they intended todo?”

  “Oh, I’m not worrying about what they intended,” Brownie answered, “I’manxious about what they’re doing now—what has happened to them. We oughtto know. It might upset our plans.”

  “There’s nobody in the boat, or in sight,” Nicky whispered as they veryslowly worked the dory closer. The empty tender lay with its nose to therock and heavy fringe of underbrush, grass and small trees at the’Glades’ rim.

  “I know what!” Brownie said, when they were quite dose. “That boat ismoored to a root on the rim-line. It’s about opposite an old Indiantrail, too. A trail leads down beside the Shark. You can’t hardly makeout the mouth where the water escapes from the ’Glades, the trees andbrush is so thick. But it’s there, and the Indians have a sort ofportage, about opposite where the tender lays.”

  “We ought to do some scouting,” suggested Nicky. “Let me!”

  Mr. Neale objected. Brownie, also, said that he had better do it.

  “You’re too stout,” Nicky urged, “and Mr. Neale is not a woodsman. I’vespent two summers in the woods, one up in Maine and one out in theSierras. I can go quietly and come back without letting anyone know I’maround.”

  He pleaded so eagerly and the danger seemed so slight, if he kept hishead, as he promised to do, that they finally agreed, and he was allowedto land on the damp, matted growth at the nose of the dory as she swungclose to the tender. Nicky listened carefully to instructions fromBrownie and warning from Mr. Neale.

  “And be especially watchful about snakes,” Brownie said. “There aren’tso many in the ’Glades, but in the heavy growth there are plenty. But ifyou keep your eyes open—and here!—take this pistol, in case of need!—youcan generally avoid them. If you fire three times, quickly, we will cometo help you. If you fire at a snake, we’ll come, too, of course, but thethree shots is to show that it is help you need, of any kind.”

  The trail was almost blind, being little used, and Nicky was hard put toit to discover his way sometimes; but Brownie had told him where to lookfor Indian signs on the trees and lower tangle, and what sort of groundto avoid, and he made a fairly quiet and very slow progress.

  Almost so suddenly as to be a total surprise, he came to the end of thetrail. Thick brush and heavy tangle of every sort of vine and creeperwas just ahead; but through it his quick eyes discerned the glint of sunon rippled water, and the white reflection of a boat’s bow!

  There, moored close to shore, so that one could step from it to theheavy roots at the edge, lay the _Libertad_!

  Nicky stayed where he was and looked and strained his ears. He movedcautiously to one side and got a better view. He could see the forwarddeck, and there crouched the two Ortiga brothers, the one they calledthe Senor and the other, the Don.

  Their voices were low, but they came clearly to Nicky.

  “Let’s call a truce,” Senor Ortiga was saying. “You and I have foughtand won, back and forth, times without number. Now there is enough goldin this boat to make us rich—and more back in the islands. Let’s burythe hatchet!”

  “It is buried, amigo,” his bro
ther agreed. “Now I suggest that we alsobury the treasure, out in the ’Glades, and disappear for a while.”

  “That would do but for one thing. We can’t trust our men. If they knowwhere it is buried they will come back and steal it—or you——”

  “Yes,” snarled the other suddenly angry again. “Or I—or you! Bury thehatchet! Oh, yes!”

  “Our original plan—your plan—is best, after all,” said the otherbrother. “We will wait until the Seminoles come and pack the treasure incases when it is divided—then it will be ‘each man for himself!’”

  “I will go back to the rimrock and see if there is any sign of theIndians,” said Senor Ortiga, rising. Nicky looked about quickly. He mustget back and warn his companions so they could, all three, hide beforethe Senor arrived.

  And as Nicky turned, his blood turned to ice in his veins.

  Lying along a low bough, not ten feet from the ground, with its steady,unblinking, bright, beady eyes fixed on him, lay a moccasin, a largespecimen of the ’Glades snake family!

  Instinctively, and with the impulsiveness that characterized hismovement at many close corners in life, Nicky lifted the pistol andfired!

  As his finger pressed the trigger he realized that, in the old adage,“the fat was in the fire.”

  He had upset all their careful plans!